

Waking up in a Bangkok sex hotel with his mum on his 30th birthday, Christmas Day, with no money and nothing to do but talk, lead to an epiphany for writer, actor and broadcaster, Rhik Samadder. He writes about battling depression and much more in his wonderfurful new book I Never Said I Loved You and on the podcast we talk feeling like he didn’t belong when growing up with Indian parents in London, forgetting trips to New York, losing all his money on a Singapore buffet breakfast and how travel can, in some ways, help heal.
On this episode we cover:
Lisa wants to give him a hug
His new book I Never Said I Love You
Exploring difficult territory in his life
Living with depression
Matt Haig’s books
Mental health issues becoming more talked about
Travel being integral to his book and his life
Waking up in a Bangkok sex hotel with his mother on his 30th birthday (Christmas day!)
Being depressed after the death of his father
The big trip for his 30th birthday – Australia and Thailand
Getting very sick abroad
Being quite a bad traveller
Trying to cover all of Australia in a couple of weeks
Australian houses being BIG
Losing all their money on a hotel buffet in Singapore
Having a terrible memory – forgetting he’d been to New York!
Having no money in Thailand, accommodation falling through
How the disastrous birthday/Christmas day actually changed his life
Travelling through Disney with his parents as a child
The death of his father hitting him very hard
“being in a country where he didn’t know whether he belonged’
How travel can only do so much healing
‘wherever you go, there you are’
Visiting his friend in Spain
Ronda and Hemingway – a town always perched on the verge of disaster
His mother’s stories about her childhood in India
India being huge and overwhelming
How the British were wankers historically
Rhik not feeling British
Lisa feeling British, English, from Spain, from the Wirral, from Brighton and from London (hashtag confused)
Rhik feeling like he was letting down two teams rather than just one
Experiencing racism growing up
The mistrust grown from being made to feel he didn’t belong
Wanting to be the little blonde girl
F**k being a fairy
Not playing fairies as an Asian boy in Lewisham (South East London)
Lewisham now being more upmarket
Living in Peckham
Kentish Town bastards coming over to our side of the river
Feeling out of place in India as a child – ‘adrift between continents’
Psychic ancestral roots in India
India’s noise and attention and craziness
Not liking being a ‘target’ when travelling
Lisa’s Dad being stopped from going into a restaurant (when with her white mum and tour group in India)
Long train journeys throughout India
Realising that he will never have the same leeway as ‘the white traveller’
White beggars in Asia asking for money ‘for travel and weed’
How travellers get their ‘travel look’ at the Khao San Road in Bangkok and the great description of this in The Beach
Lisa’s dancing on bar days
Being able to identify all different nationalities when abroad
Dutch tourists and ‘thigh time’
Do the Dutch not have curtains?
If anyone can tell us what this issue with thighs and curtains with the Dutch do shout!
Curtains in the hair not in the house
Going to New York two weeks after 9/11 then forgetting he had been
Disorientating or disorienting?
How the trip came back to him when he saw his passport stamp!
A dwarf punk band in Brooklyn
Running into an old flatmate in the Spanish portrait wing in the Met gallery
Re-contextualising relationships in a different environment
Does documenting everything with photos flatten the experience of travel?
Whether photo filters are good or bad for the world
Lisa liking ‘things to look how they are’ with #nofilter
The phenomenon of travelling to get the pictures
Matt Haig talking about how travel helps depression
Travelling for work being different to pleasure
The healing power of connecting with people from different places
How satisfaction is better to aim for than happiness
Going on the same holiday every year to France
Eating French cheese until they’re entirely spherical
French hip hop about throwing your shirt off
Being sent to LA to interview a man burying himself alive with snakes in the Mojave Desert
Discovering the divine music of Fleetwood Mac
Being on the threshold of an adventure in a plane
Travelling and feeling full of possibility of being alive
The music question – which has a great answer! And Lisa offers a great one too
How the LA landing is a great landing